Now and in the Hour of Our Death

by Patrick Taylor

  Some of Fiona’s Canadian acquaintances, knowing of the Troubles back in Ireland, thought that it was odd that an Irishwoman and an Englishwoman could be so close. Why the hell shouldn’t they?

  They had a lot in common: teaching, the opera, books, an ability to find the same things hilarious, often to the confusion of their Canadian acquaintances, and something that Fiona knew she had taken time to recognize—a shared background, even if they had come from different sides of Saint George’s Channel, which separated England from Ireland.

  The ten-year gap in their ages made no difference. As girls, they had read the same Bible (although as taught by clergy of different persuasions); studied the same books at school, the same works of Shakespeare; been taught the same history, even if—as Fiona recognized years ago—the history had been slanted in favour of the English. They’d listened to the same pop groups, watched the same television programmes, probably read the same newspapers. They spoke the same language, though with different accents, different nuances, but each understood the other’s subtleties. Their sameness was what had brought them together in the first place, and from that coming together a friendship had grown. She wondered if Becky was of the same opinion? She looked questioningly at her friend, who must have misunderstood the look.

  Becky pointed at the menu. “Are you having trouble deciding, Fiona?”

  “Not at all. I’ll have a Caesar salad. I told you, I’ll be cooking a big dinner tonight for Tim.”

  “Indeed. Lucky Doctor Tim. I’m having sardines on toast for my tea, so if you don’t mind, I’m going to tuck in now, and the scallops meunière sound absolutely delicious.”

  The waitress appeared with their drinks. Fiona ordered their meals, then raised her glass to Becky. “Cheers.”

  “I think,” said Becky, “we can do better than that. Let’s drink to homecomings.”

  Fiona thought of tonight and Tim. “To homecomings and, Becky”—Fiona looked across at her companion—“to friendship.”

  “I’ll certainly drink to that.” Becky took a healthy swallow, then stifled a tiny burp.

  Fiona sipped, glanced out toward the road past the Teahouse, and watched two joggers running past, Lycra-clad, grimly determined, never smiling, ignoring each other, oblivious to the sea, the mountains, the billowing clouds above. On they ran, conscious only of their individual pulse rates, the miles covered, their improved cardiovascular status, toned thighs, and selfish hopes for everlasting life.

  They thought they were running to something. Fiona knew she had fled from Northern Ireland and still ran from her memories, and she believed that inside every jogger there was something from which they were running. Everyone did that in their own way, she supposed. Some drank or used drugs, some shopped, some were workaholics, some hid in a religion.

  She looked across the table to where Becky sat, seemingly contented in the sunshine, and wondered what, if anything, chased after that most placid of women. It was none of Fiona’s business, she knew, but realized that if something were troubling Becky deeply, she’d let down her reserve and tell her friend Fiona.

  And Fiona smiled because she knew that, unlike the self-contained joggers, she and Becky each had a friend to run with.

  CHAPTER 28

  CASTLEDERG. SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1983

  How much longer would they have to keep running? Davy stared at the darkness through the side window of the car racing along the country road to Castlederg, where a bridge spanned the Derg. Eamon, who was driving, said the river was the last obstacle between them and the safe place in Tyrone—if there wasn’t a roadblock on the bridge.

  Davy hoped to God there wouldn’t be. He’d had enough close calls since he’d got outside the wire at the Kesh, but now they were on the last lap, and he had nothing to do but sit with his thoughts.

  Although his heart rate had slowed, he moved restlessly in the backseat. Perhaps, he thought, it’s just the darkness that’s unsettling me. He was used to Belfast and its streetlights. One or two always managed to survive the glass-shattering street riots. Corridor lights had burned all night in the Kesh. Even the flare of Molotov cocktails hurled by the Loyalist mobs as they rampaged through the streets of the Falls in the early days of the Troubles would have been preferable to the impenetrable gloom outside the car.

  The last time he’d experienced the utter nothingness of the countryside at night was way back when he’d been training as a boy in the Tyrone Sperrin Mountains.

  The Sperrins weren’t very far away now, and it struck Davy that there was a certain symmetry in his being taken back to Tyrone, where the whole bloody thing had started for him when he was sixteen.

  Da had enrolled Davy and Jimmy Ferguson in the old Official IRA. They’d been sent down here from Belfast. Someone senior in the organization had decided that Davy would be trained as an explosives expert.

  Back then he’d believed in the Cause, and, when one of his devices had gone off prematurely, killing Da and wounding Davy, he had strengthened his resolve to fight for a free Ireland.

  After the explosion, he’d had to lie in a crude shelter, nursed by wee Jimmy. God, even if Fiona wouldn’t see him when he got to Canada, and Davy couldn’t believe that was true, had to believe it wasn’t true as fervently as he used to believe in the struggle, it would be great to see Jimmy Ferguson again. Him and his quoting William Butler Yeats.

  In the long, dark nights, with only the cold, distant stars for light, Jimmy would sit by Davy and recite: “O’Driscoll drove with a song / The wild duck and the drake / From the tall and tufted reeds / Of the drear Hart Lake…” or, “Two girls in silk kimonos, both / Beautiful, one a gazelle.”

  When he’d first met Fiona, he’d thought of her as a gazelle, and he’d kept that thought through the last nine weary years. He knew that lovers could part, that often after a time they found someone else. Davy smiled wryly. Who the hell was he meant to meet in the Kesh? Eamon? Poor Sean Donovan? As his smile faded, he knew that, had he been on the outside with every woman in Christendom, waiting and willing, not one of them could have taken Fiona’s place.

  But she must have had other men. Davy flinched when he realized what “had” could mean. He didn’t want to imagine her in bed with a stranger, with anyone but him, but he couldn’t help himself, and the images tore at him.

  Nine years was a hell of a long time to stay celibate, and to distract himself he thought back through the long years since he’d last been in Tyrone. He could remember one more line that Jimmy was fond of, from Yeats’s “Down by the Salley Gardens,” “She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs; / But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.” And he had been foolish back then. They all had, believing they could get rid of the British.

  Was he full of tears? He’d only shed them the day after she’d left the Kesh having told him she was going to Canada. All of his other tears, for the people his bombs had killed or maimed, were buried somewhere deep inside him along with the ones he should have shed for Da, killed by the bomb that had shattered Davy’s thigh.

  He tugged his pants away from his thigh, feeling their dampness, smelling the stink of the ditch where he’d crouched after staggering across the road outside the Kesh and smashing his way through a blackthorn hedge. He imagined he could still hear the racket of choppers clattering over his hiding place, the drone of a high-winged monoplane, the whining of tires on tarmac as Saracen armoured cars and Land Rovers sped past him toward the prison.

  The relief when Eamon had hauled him into the back of a black Mercedes that they’d stolen from a nearby farm had been replaced by a feeling that came close to despair when the bloody car ran out of petrol.

  The surge of hope again when the ambush that Eamon had arranged paid off, even though it had seemed to take a lifetime. Davy had sprawled on the road pretending to be injured. Eamon flagged down a motorist, asked for help with Davy, then overpowered the man and hijacked his Hillman. The details were blurred, but the picture of the
victim’s wife sitting on the road, her skirt rumpled above her fat white thighs, shaking her fist and screaming, “You Fenian bastards,” would stay with Davy.

  He took comfort from knowing that, although they’d lost their car and she’d lost her dignity, they were both still alive and unhurt. And a bit of her dignity was a small price to pay for the Hillman. Being on the move again had given Davy reason to believe he was going to make it, and everything that had passed was going to be worthwhile. It had been crowded in the small saloon.

  There had been five other men in the Mercedes when Eamon had come back for Davy, and squeezing them into the Hillman had been a tight fit. Now there were only three in the new car. The others had headed for Belfast in the Hillman after Eamon had pulled into a lay-by and stolen an old Ford Prefect from an elderly couple who’d been having a picnic.

  Davy felt his head bang off the roof and heard Brendan McGuinness, who was sitting in the passenger’s seat, mutter, “Take it easy, Eamon.”

  Just my luck, Davy thought, to be stuck with that shite McGuinness.

  * * *

  The group had split up. Three men from Andersonstown, a Republican ghetto in the city, had wanted to head for home, and Davy had assumed McGuinness would also want to get back to his own familiar territory, but no such luck. It seemed his plan was to head for Dublin and the headquarters of Provisional Army Council, the Provos’ governing body. It suited him to make the attempt to cross the border from Tyrone.

  Davy stared at the outline of the man’s bullet head. What was it that made him such a bitter little shite?

  Davy had felt sympathy when the old gentleman pleaded with Eamon not to take the Ford, explaining that his wife was diabetic and had to get home for her insulin. McGuinness had asked Davy if he still had the .25 and made no bones that he thought they should shoot the old folks and dump the bodies in the bushes so it would take much longer for the Security Forces to find out what car some escapees were using.

  Fuck you, McGuinness, Davy thought, glad he had lied, said he’d dumped the gun. He dropped his hand to his pants’ pocket. The little revolver was hard against his hand. He hoped the old pair had managed to get help.

  The car started to slow down. Had they arrived at the sanctuary Eamon had promised? Davy craned forward and tried to see what the headlights were showing. He could just make out the rear end of another car. Eamon braked and stopped the Ford. Davy could see that they were in a built-up area with lighted shop windows on both sides of the road. They hadn’t reached safety yet. Was this Castlederg?

  “The bastards. The bastards.” Eamon pounded his fist on the steering wheel. “There’s a fucking roadblock on the bridge.”

  Christ, it was like being on a roller coaster, up one minute, down the next. Davy stared through the windscreen to where, by the Ford’s headlights and the dim glow of streetlights, he could see a tailback before the bridge. He glanced behind through the rear window. There was a great big petrol tanker nearly up their arse.

  The queue was creeping inexorably to the checkpoint. As they moved along the main road, Davy could see Land Rovers and Saracens blocking every side road. Peelers and helmeted soldiers, weapons never still, covered the vehicles moving toward the bridge. How the hell could they get out of here?

  Eamon said, “We’re going to have to run for it. I can see the roadblock ahead and they’re making everybody get out of their cars. If they see your uniform pants, Davy…”

  McGuinness growled, “Leave McCutcheon. We can make it while they chase him.”

  Eamon ignored McGuinness. “There’s a bunch of peelers in the street off to our left, then there’s a gap up ahead and a bit of dark. As soon as we’re into the shadow … everyone out.”

  Davy could understand why Eamon was well regarded by the Provos. That was the second time today in a moment of crisis that Eamon had taken charge. No fuss, no bother—he simply got on with what had to be done.

  Davy followed Eamon and Brendan as they kept in the shadows and slid toward a tobacconist’s shop, its lighted windows protected by a metal grille. Beside him, the line of cars jerked forward, and from behind came the honking of a horn. It must be the driver of the petrol tanker, impatient because his path was blocked by the abandoned Ford.

  He saw Eamon and Brendan vanish inside the shop. As Davy shut the door behind him, he heard a small bell jangle. There was a notice hanging from a suction cup stuck to the door’s glass. Davy turned the sign so to any passerby it would read CLOSED.

  The shopkeeper, beefy in a collarless shirt, stood behind a glass-topped counter. Shelves behind him on the wall bore packets of cigarettes. Glass-stoppered bottles of unwrapped Gobstoppers, brandy balls, midget gems, and liquorice comfits jostled for space. In a better time, Davy would have bought quarter pounds of all three to give to the youngsters on his street.

  A bead curtain hung from an arch at the back of the premises. Was that another way out?

  “Can I help you, gentlemen?”

  Eamon said, “An bHfuil Gaeilge aGat?” It was about the only Irish Davy knew. The citizens of Belfast had given up the ancient tongue generations ago—Gerry Adams had had to take Gaelic lessons when he was in the Kesh—but many Republicans from the country were still fluent. Loyalists were not. Despite city folks’ general ignorance of Gaelic, one phrase, “Do you speak Irish?” was still a handy password in any Republican area. Da had taught Davy that, years ago.

  He saw the shopkeeper’s eyes, piggy slits in his jowled face.

  “What?”

  “An bHuil…”

  “Fuckin’ Fenian hoors’ gits.” The man’s face turned puce. He lifted a horizontal wooden gate at the side of the counter’s glass and forced his bulk through. He had fists like hams. “Get the fuck out of my shop, or I’ll…”

  “You’ll what?” Eamon said. He stood in front of the man. Davy and McGuinness flanked him, forcing him to back up against the counter. “You’ll what? There’s three of us.”

  “I’ll…” He swung at Eamon. Missed. Eamon grabbed the arm, and McGuinness kneed the man in the balls.

  Davy heard him howl and his breath wheeze like air draining from torn bellows. The fat man’s face crumpled, and he sank to his knees, clutching himself.

  “See if we can get out the back, Davy. Brendan, lock the front door.”

  Davy shoved the bead curtain aside. He was in a storeroom. Cardboard cartons and crates of soft drinks were stacked to the low ceiling. An aisle between the supplies led to a door. He hurried to it, found the lock, opened it and tried to pull the door open. It wouldn’t budge. He jiggled the lock and tried again. Not an inch. Davy put both hands on the handle and hauled until he could feel the veins standing out on his forehead. He paused to take a breath before he put his shoulder down and charged the thing. As he leaned forward, he noticed a sign on the doorframe. PUSH.

  Push, for fuck’s sake.

  He did, and the door opened onto a concrete-paved backyard huddled between low red-brick walls, half-lit by the glow from the street lamps in front of the shop. Davy took one step and froze when something metallic crashed ahead of him. He saw a dustbin lid, still jangling as it settled on the concrete, and a cat leaping to the top of the wall.

  “Christ.” He ran back to the shop.

  The shopkeeper lay on the floor, struggling to take off his trousers.

  “There’s a way out,” Davy said.

  “Great,” Eamon said. “Get those guard’s jacket and pants off you. Take your man’s trousers.”

  Davy undid the waist button and zip, ripped the dark blue serge down. When he hauled on the shopkeeper’s corduroys, he felt as if he had climbed into a tent, but at least the pants were dry and didn’t yell, “Escaped prisoner.” He peeled off his jacket, only pausing to retrieve Jimmy’s letter and Fiona’s picture and stick them in his pocket.

  A shadow fell across the floor. Davy glanced to the window and saw a helmeted head and the outline of a self-loading-rifle. Their owner pounded on the locked front door. />
  “Open up.”

  The shopkeeper tried to slide across the floor. McGuinness booted him in the guts. His grunt was smothered by the sounds of pounding on the glass and a yell from outside of, “Open the fucking door.” Glass shattered, and a hand slid though the broken pane, its fingers groping for the lock. There were more troops outside.

  “Out the back,” Eamon said quietly.

  Eamon, followed by McGuinness, led the way through the storeroom. Davy hesitated, bent and pulled the .25 from his discarded trousers, and stuffed it in his new pants’ pocket. He had no intention of using it, but unless things had changed radically since his day, the Provos had always found arms hard to come by. The least he could do was give this one back to its owners.

  He ran into the next room, turning cartons and crates into the aisle behind him. Out the door and across the yard. He could hear the soldiers swearing as they struggled with the cartons in the storeroom.

  Eamon and McGuinness were up ahead, and Davy pounded after them, trying to ignore the ache in his thigh.

  “Halt or I’ll fire.”

  A muzzle flash tore the night apart. The report echoed across the yard’s walls. The bullet struck brick close to Davy’s head, and the ricochet whined away to oblivion. Those fuckin’ soldiers were given what the British army called Yellow Cards, rules of engagement that said troops could open fire only if fired upon. What the fuck did I fire at them, Davy asked himself, brandy balls?

  He ran after Eamon. They were in a back alley between rows of terrace houses. Davy limped on as fast as he could, not daring to look back.

  “Halt.”

  Another shot. Eamon went down.

  Davy ran up to the fallen man, grabbed him by the shoulder, and hauled him to his feet. There wasn’t time to ask Eamon if he’d been shot. “Can you run?”

  “Aye,” Eamon managed to gasp.

  “Come on, then.” Davy pulled on Eamon’s arm, relieved that he was following. If he hadn’t been, Davy had already made up his mind to carry his friend.